Category Archives: Baby

It’s National Poetry Day, for once it’s the actual day for this country so I’m not just using another nation’s day as an excuse. I wasn’t intending to write a poem, but this almost came out spontaneously as a response to an email, so I thought I’d better scrub it, put it here and reply more sensibly. I’m not saying this is the definitive guide to child-rearing, incidentally. Just a facet of how I see it.

Justin’s House has started on CBeebies and it is proper mental. First of all, it’s clear that the BBC, quite rightly, view Justin Fletcher as a valuable asset and are prepared to give him whatever he wants. More singing in Something Special? Sure. Sketch show with lotsa cross-dressing opportunities? Tranny it up! We love you, Justin. Something Special showed that clowns don’t have to be creepy (though you’re phoning it in for series seven, a bit), you have a facility for voices and vocal FX which mean you’re a natural for work on the wordless animated masterpieces Shaun the Sheep and Timmy Time, Gigglebiz is properly weird and hilarious, you clearly love the work. What do you want to do?Continue reading Unjustified→

It’s Fathers’ Day. I know this because I got coffee & biscuits in bed, a hand-painted card, a cry of “Happy Daddy Day!” and because the air is suffused with the fragrance of a million fried breakfasts.

Where did the cherries go? I haven’t seen any since. It’s strange that they were in the supermarket one day and one day only, long enough for me to feed them to my daughter.

Who is, I should tell you now, two this month. The end of this month, but still. This month. Two years old.

Better get on with this book then, eh? What a ridiculous amount of time it is taking. It’s all done. The sticking point? The spine. Maybe I should just DO IT and get it over with.

Anyway, gosh. What a long weekend we’ve just had. Royal wedding – don’t get them very often. We watched it… in fact, we watched it twice, the second time with E!’s awesome commentary team of Angela Rippon, Dermot O’Leary, some shiny American woman and someone else. But, yeah, I mean, I would have the royals in a council flat quicker than you can picture it, but I watched the wedding. Of course I did. It’s history, innit? Plus my daughter likes watching soldiers marching.

And if that wasn’t enough, someone only went and killed Osama bin Laden. Killed him! Conspiracy theories are gathering and swirling already, but I really honestly believe that he was killed this weekend. Why not? Odd thing to claim, if he wasn’t. Why not claim it earlier if you’re going to fake it? Why didn’t W do it? No, I think it’s legit, despite the obviously problematic burial at sea.

Well, that’s it. I blogged 9/11, now I’ve blogged the death of its progenitor. Different blog, different host, different blog platform… but still me, still me writing guff on the interspazz.

Really have, too. Guardian Film Talk have banded and bonded and we’ve made something new, and GOOD, damn it, from the disaster which befell us. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? I’m impressed, anyway. At the time of writing, my first post on the new blog is ready to go. By the time anyone reads this, it’ll be up. God, I hope it’s ok. But don’t tell me what you think here, tell me over there. We need the readers. We need the love.

Elsewhere in life; usual ups and downs, sickness, tiredness, beautiful baby, it’s all good really. She’ll be two in May. Two! I can hardly believe that. Can you believe that? No, I didn’t think so. But there it is, it’s true. Soon she’ll have her own investment portfolio.

I’ve just cut the stones out of a load of cherries, for my daughter. She’s sitting eating them, her chin stained the same blackish-red as my fingers. She is chatting away through the cherries, happy, making patterns in the juice on her tray. I’m wondering if this is one of those memories I’m supposed to keep. In doing so, I’m writing it down here.

I won’t remember this properly. I’ll try to recall it – the juice on the knife, the feeling of doing something for her, the unabashed way she attacks the fruit – but I think it’ll just be a film memory, a work of fiction pieced together from real life and a thousand images in the media.

Shame. It was fun. And, in doing this, I’ve made it less fun. Object lesson: Don’t do this.